Saturday, January 5, 2013

(CNN)
– The Californian picked to lead congressional Democrats’ efforts on
gun control says the positions held by some gun rights advocates are
unnecessarily divisive, and that government action should go beyond
simply outlawing certain weapons.
“I think assault weapons are a pox on the home of every gun owner,”
Rep. Mike Thompson said Saturday on CNN. “I think that’s the thing
that’s going to cause the overwhelming majority of people in this
country who aren’t gun owners to have negative feelings about those of
us who are gun owners.” [...]

The phrase “gun control,” Thompson said, is not comprehensive enough for the discussion.

“A lot of times when you talk about gun control, you turn off more than half of your audience,”
he said in the interview. Possible solutions can include “everything
from the background checks to the assault magazines, the assault
weapons, the mental health (system) capacities that we have, our culture
of violence that seems to be so overwhelming right now.”